A Change of Pace

Work has changed the way I do photography. Having just started a year-long placement, I am working 8 hours a day, leaving me with only the evenings and weekends to shoot and edit my images. This means that I often can’t edit my images straight after shooting them. When taking into account other hobbies and commitments, I often don’t get round to editing an image until at least a few days after it’s been shot – maybe even as long as a week. The strangest thing is, I’m beginning to quite like this pace.

I find that leaving the images for a week or so before editing them makes the process much more enjoyable. I won’t always leave them for this long – sometimes I get so excited about an image that I simply can’t wait to start working on it – but when I do, it makes the editing feel fresh and independent of the shooting. This, in turn, allows me to discover the images in a way that I would never have done had I been blinkered by the lingering thought from the shoot.

Trees on a Hill, #01

That’s exactly what I did with these images from a trip to Skipton a couple of weeks ago. The delay between shooting and processing allowed me to approach the images with a fresh mind, and work with them much more thoughtfully.

Trees on a Hill, #02

Plenty of times I have gone out for a shoot and come away disappointed, before angrily formatting my camera’s SD card. Although I don’t like to admit it, the times when I do come away with nothing are frustrating, and it is hard to think calmly in that state of mind. If I leave the images, however, and come back to them a week or two later, that frustration and anger has melted away, and I can look at the image with a new pair of eyes.